Feral
by EllieLloyd
Summary: He could smell her, practically taste her on the cold, hard earth. Scattered leaves in every shade of ochre and chocolate swirled in her wake like the breadcrumb trail of a frightened child. She should be scared…


Chapter 1 – Pieces

They had been forced to douse the clearing in the closest incendiary liquid to hand, cheap petrol siphoned from an unfortunate hiker's car about 10 miles out, to be sure all the shreds were burnt.

They should have known that tearing apart the bitches dreadlocked friend would only incense her further, a possibility Jared had raised as they had thrown his still wiggling hands on the pyre. Hindsight is a son of a bitch.

That said, none could have predicted the sheer, gut wrenching, devastation. She had left the bodies strewn across the old Cullen treaty line, as though mocking them and their ancestors.

Twenty people are nothing to a vampire, to a state or even perhaps to a city, a blip on the radar of the atrocities of humanity. Sure, the media would report on it, people would be horrified, disgusted. Families would cry and die and piece themselves back together. Yet to a reservation of a mere few hundred…

There wasn't a family who hadn't lost someone, a person untouched. Women and children stolen away in the night, stripped, drained and dropped like empty crisp packets. Twenty.

Cousins, aunties, friends, the pack had been decimated. Oh the wolves were all alive, after all what's the use in causing suffering if your intended victims aren't alive to feel it. But they would never be the same.

And Paul, oh Paul, he had no other family, all his friends were pack, so she took the only person he had.

Taha Aki, when they found her at the end of a long line of cold corpses with glassy, unseeing eyes. Paul's mother was the only thing he had, and the redhead had ruined her, slit her throat, drained her and laid her out in a crimson stained dress like a slain angel with a halo of red and gold leaves.

He was inconsolable, unreachable, and island alone as he dropped to his knees ragged denim fluttering as he phased seamlessly, bursting out of himself and curling up next to her. Nudging her unnaturally pale cheek with his lupine nose and refusing to move.

He hadn't been able to phase back since, truly they weren't sure if he could or had even tried. His human mind was shattered pieces they could make no sense of through the pack mind. Three days later, the tribal elders approached to remove her for a Quileute burial and he was gone.

The pack focussed with single minded rage on her. Just keeping going, running, planning. Eat, sleep, phase, run. Go, go, go. Grief was compartmentalised as the pack took out her 'children' one by one, closing in, following, waiting, merciless. By the time she finally attacked head on they had reduced her army to fifteen snarling, drooling newborns. The complete lack of humanity in their eyes caused Jacob to pause a moment and consider them. Animals, that's what they were, nothing more, nothing less. Slightly higher intelligence perhaps but ultimately driven by instinct and hunger. He had felt the pack shift formation, working with his insight.

She hadn't banked on their newly extended numbers. The addition of Seth, Leah, Colin and Brady, all new, strong and intensely grieving, had proven to be her downfall.

Defeat was in her scarlet eyes as they circled, tails and ears flicking, stepping over the scattered limbs of her fallen army. Sam gave the command, "Ready!"

Front legs shifted and eyes narrowed, ready to pounce when a blur of sooty grey exploded into the wildflower strewn clearing. A smudge of darkness against a backdrop of pinks, blues and yellows. Shards of her scattered in easily a twenty meter radius as his fury echoed through their collective skulls. Then, as swiftly as he had arrived, he was gone, loping back into the forest, shoulders low, more animal than man.

It had been two months since they had found the twenty, six weeks since they had taken her down and five days since the last glimpse of a Grey wolf amongst the trees. He was always there, a niggle at the back of their minds; they had all grown used to the presence of him in the far reaches of their animal conscious.

The reservation was deep in mourning. Once the job was done they had dispersed to their individual homes, despairing relatives and funeral after funeral. The land seemed to mourn with them, ceaseless rain pelted the reservation day and night, soaking the clusters of people who never seemed to leave the graveyard.

The imprinted wolves retreated into the bond, sacred links which soothed the wolf and their mate and held them together. The single pack members spent a lot of time with family, and, aside from the prerequisite patrols, the pack seemed to be slowly drifting apart.

Sam groaned and rubbed a russet hand over his eyes as the awareness that his imprint was no longer curled next to him dragged him from slumber. He slouched down the short hallway leading from the master bedroom, to the open living room/kitchen and gazed blearily around, searching for her and attempting to simultaneously clear his brain of the remaining fog of sleep.

Giving in to his more alert senses he sniffed and immediately located her just outside the patio door, off the kitchen come dining area section of their living room.

"Em?" He grunted, approaching the door slowly so as to not startle his fiancé.

"Hmm?" she turned slightly and gazed at him through the glass.

He tried to coax his face into a gentle smile which probably ended up being more of a grimace "Have you seen him today baby?"

Emily nodded, frowning slightly, the scars on the right side of her face adapting to the new expression. She still took his breath away, after four years together. That wasn't just the imprint, Sam was sure of it, the imprint was just a pointer, a flashing arrow, insta-bond. This was deeper. A love based on learning and growing together, overcoming their tumultuous beginning and the guilt Sam still felt when she prodded her scars in the mirror when she thought he wasn't looking. She couldn't be more beautiful to him, scarred or not, they were a part of her.

She sighed "I know he sees me, he knows we're here. The pack is falling apart bit by bit; we should be pulling together, taking care of each other, as the rest of the community is." Shaking her head she turned back to gaze out into the endless damp green. "We need him as much as he needs us."

Bella hadn't seen Jacob for weeks, not since the cinema incident with Mike Newton. Her mood was temperamental at best but now was not the time to harass him, she knew that much. The mass murder on the reservation had shocked everyone and Charlie had known several of the victims. He was coping stoically as ever but she knew that, between this and the loss of Harry Clearwater, he didn't need to be worrying about her too. It was time to grow up a little, put her big girl shoes on and try to get on with life, the people of the reservation had lost so many it had begun to put _his_ departure into perspective for her.

All those people, something wasn't right. After the incident with Laurent in _their_ clearing and the pack of wolves tearing him apart she had known something was, for lack of a better word, hinky.

She began to dress warmly, in jeans, hiking boots and a thick jumper, decision made. She would go back to the clearing and begin from there. Descending the stairs two at a time, Bella grabbed her winter coat, from its home on the banister, and keys from the hand carved wooden dish on the window sill next to the door. She was literally three feet from the door when someone rapped loudly on it making her jump in surprise.

Charlie's working and Billy doesn't seem to come around much anymore. Who could it be? She wondered, batting a few strands of hair out of her eyes before opening the front door to reveal a rather desolate looking Jacob.

"Bells, we need to talk."


End file.
